The Romanov Cross: A Novel (33 page)

Anastasia glared at the filthy guard, who chewed the bread with his mouth open, but when the cook Kharitonov threw her a warning look, she snuggled Jemmy closer in her arms and went back to the stairs.

“We should have a dance sometime,” the guard said, no doubt mocking her gait as she climbed the wooden steps.

“Just shut up,” Harley said, as he crouched in the shadow of the crooked church, “and let me think.”

For once, Eddie and Russell did as they were told, but he knew it wouldn’t last long.

Looking out over the colony grounds, Harley was amazed at how the place had been transformed in the space of a couple of days. There were half a dozen green tents, some in the traditional peaked style, others more like Quonset huts, but all of them solidly built and interconnected by pathways laid down with rubber matting and lamp poles and guide ropes. Even over the sound of the rising wind, he could hear the hum of generators from an aluminum shed, erected near a lavatory platform raised above a pair of portable holding tanks.

But what he didn’t see was any people; in fact, right now, the place looked as abandoned as it had the first time he’d been here. The Coast Guard guys were gone, and so was their chopper. When he’d heard it lift off hours ago, he’d hoped that its departure signaled the end of the expedition to the island; at last, he thought, it would be safe to get back to grave-robbing.

But he’d sure as hell been wrong on that score. Somebody was
here, and it looked like they were planning to stay a while.
Damn, damn, damn
.

“I’m freezing my ass off,” Russell muttered. “What’s the plan?”

Harley was having to recalibrate, and quickly. They were carrying their shovels and pickaxe, along with some steel pitons he hoped to use to loosen up sections of soil this time around. He saw no one patrolling the grounds, but he knew it would be far too dangerous to try to make their way across the open colony. If somebody unexpectedly came out of one of those tents, there’d be nowhere to hide.

Crawling backward, he said, “Let’s go straight to the graveyard.” There was only another hour or two of weak sunlight left in the day, and he couldn’t afford to waste any of it.

Skirting the colony by sticking to the other side of the wooden stockade, he led them through the thickets of spruce and alder and hemlock, batting a course through the snow-laden branches, until to his own surprise he saw that a parallel trail had been neatly cut and laid all the way down from the colony gates to the wooden posts of the cemetery. Lights, too, had been strung up the whole way, and they were switched on even now. Although he couldn’t figure out how the government had heard about the emerald cross he’d found, he thought it was pretty clear, from all of this construction, that they had heard about it somehow. His brother Charlie wasn’t stupid; it was unlikely he’d spilled the beans to anyone, but Harley had a lot less faith in that greedy bitch his brother had married, or her idiot sister. Bathsheba would tell anyone anything.

And now look what he had to contend with as a result.

“Check this out,” Eddie said, holding open the flap to a dressing shed built to the left of the gates. Harley glanced inside and saw a rack of white coveralls and booties and visored headgear, all neatly arranged. Before he could stop him, Russell had slunk inside and put on one of the helmets.

“Take me to your leader,” he said, with his arms outstretched, and Harley had to snatch the helmet off him and slap it back on the shelf.

“Get out of here,” he ordered, “before I kick your ass all the way back to Port Orlov.”

“Yeah,” Russell sneered, “you and what army?”

The graveyard, luckily, was as deserted as the colony, and the fresh snow had nicely covered their tracks from the previous grave they’d opened. But now there were tight nylon lines stretched all over the place, with little pennants stuck into the ground here and there, marking the whole graveyard off in some kind of grid. And off at the far end, where the cliff gave way, whole strips of sod had been laid, crisscross, on top of a tarp, along with a fallen marker. As Harley got closer, he could see an open grave yawning.

“Looks like they got the job done better than we did,” Eddie said. “Shit, I wonder what they used.”

Harley was less interested in how they’d done it, then why. They hadn’t just dug up the grave and searched for treasures; they’d taken the whole damn body. As he stood beside the empty plot, he wondered what they wanted with a corpse. Did they think there was something inside it, something they could only extract elsewhere? Maybe after thawing the thing out? All that was left here were the remnants of the wooden coffin, a lot of it cracked and splintered.

“Hey, check it out,” said Russell, craning his head over the edge of the cliff and pointing down at the beach below. “It’s a boat.”

Harley gingerly approached the cliff and saw what he was pointing at—an RHI up on davits. This was the first piece of good news he’d had in days; the
Kodiak
was still stuck on the rocks and taking on water, and he had not known how to break it to his crew that the thing would probably never make it back to shore. Now he had an alternative, courtesy of the United States Coast Guard.

The only problem was, he’d be returning virtually empty-handed if he left now. Those rosary beads couldn’t be worth much.

“So,” Eddie said, scanning the desolate cemetery, “where do we start?”

Harley wished he knew. He’d picked wrong the last time, guessing that the most impressive headstone would be sitting atop the greatest booty. It was like that stupid game show,
Deal or No Deal
. Who knew where the serious loot was hidden?

“Russell, I’m going to need you to keep watch,” he said. “Go down
that trail about twenty yards, lie low, and wait there. If you see or hear anyone coming, get back here and warn us.”

“Wait a second,” Eddie complained. “I did the digging last time. Why don’t I get to be the watchman?”

“Just do what I say,” Harley said, “both of you.”

Russell plainly didn’t need to hear another word; the idea of not working was sweet, and he tossed his spade to Eddie and meandered back toward the lighted trailhead. Eddie picked up the spade in the hand that wasn’t holding the pick and looked at Harley with a sour expression that said,
You’d better get it right this time
.

Russell couldn’t believe his luck. All the way to the graveyard, he’d been thinking how bad it would suck to have to try to dig up a frozen grave. Just chipping the ice away from some of the intake valves on his oil-company job was a bitch and a half. Waiting until he was safely through the cemetery gates and out of Harley’s sight, he reached into the pocket of his parka and pulled out one of the beers he’d been carrying. One thing you could say about Alaska—the whole damn state was a cooler.

He went down the trail, looking for a comfortable perch—which wasn’t going to be easy. Everything was covered in snow and ice, and the ground was as solid as a rock. He wished Harley and Eddie a lot of luck, especially after their last dig had turned up nothing but a bunch of crystal beads on a string. As far as he was concerned, this whole trip was going to be a bust, and he’d be lucky to get back to the Yardarm with ten bucks in his pocket.

If he wanted to score Angie Dobbs, he’d need more than that as bait. Christ, it was hilarious that Harley thought it was such a big deal he’d fucked her. Who hadn’t?

In the harsh glow of the next light pole, he spotted a glistening stump just off to one side of the trail. It was an old tree trunk, covered
in moss and lichen, and though it wasn’t exactly a Barcalounger, it was the best prospect he was likely to uncover. Brushing the snow away from the matt of rotting leaves around its base, he picked up a bunch of them in his arms and made as much of a cushion as he could. Then he plopped down on top of the pile before the rising wind could blow them away, pulled the string on his hood to cinch it closer to his face, and waited.

Everybody was always talking about the pure and unstained beauty of Alaska—Russell had seen all the brochures and ads and commercials the state tourist bureau put out—but as far as he could see, it was a load of crap. The place was cold and wet and dark and the rotting leaves he was sitting on stank. He took another slug of the beer. Without alcohol, and pussy, there’d be no reason to go on living.

And pot. He shouldn’t forget the value of grade-A weed, which was never more plentiful than when he was behind bars at Spring Creek.

He hadn’t been sitting on the stump for very long—the can of beer still had a few drops left in it—when he thought he heard something.

Quickly, he swiped the hood back off his head, and listened hard.

Was that a voice, or just the wind sighing in the boughs?

He stood up, gulped the last of the beer, and tossed the can into the bushes.

Yes, it was. It
was
a voice, talking in some weird accent. Russian. For a second he thought,
It’s the ghost of one of those dead settlers. The legends about the island are all true!
Then he got hold of himself, and before he knew it, his feet were carrying him back onto the trail, and through the woods, past the lighting poles, between the carved gateposts of the graveyard. Harley and Eddie were wandering around like they still hadn’t picked a target yet, but he knew he couldn’t shout at them. Instead, he ran among the graves, waving his arms like a lunatic, until they saw him and grabbed up their gear and took off in all directions. Russell tripped over a hole in the ground—shit, was this the grave they’d already opened?—and by the time he got up again they were gone.

He could hear another voice, too, now, carried on the wind and
coming up the trail, and he ran helter-skelter out of the graveyard and into the surrounding woods. The branches tore at his sleeves and the thicket was almost impenetrable but he just kept running. The breath was hot in his throat, and he realized, not for the first time, just how out of shape he was. Two years in the penitentiary can do that to you. So it was a miracle when he stumbled into a tiny glade where an ancient hut still stood. All that was left of the place was a few boards holding the walls in place and a door made out of wooden staves, but right now it looked better than the Yardarm to him.

He banged through the brittle door, closed what was left of it behind him, then bent over double, gasping for breath. The beer came up in a rush of hot vomit, splashing onto his boots. The wind rattled the sticks of the door. He saw a table, and an old, empty dynamite crate drawn up to it like a stool. He leaned one hand on the side of the table. An old leather book was on it, with the frozen nub of a candle in a pewter dish. His head was pounding so hard he thought he was going to stroke out on the spot.
Get a grip
, he told himself.
You haven’t even done anything wrong yet. It was Harley who broke open the grave. I’m just along for the ride
.

He sat down with a thump on the dynamite box, which groaned but remained intact.

All he’d done, he reminded himself, was trespass—and maybe on government property. What could the penalty be for that, anyway? It couldn’t be that bad, and if it weren’t for the fact that he was still on parole, it wouldn’t have even been worth worrying about. But he
was
on parole, and if he ever had to go back into that cramped cell in Spring Creek—where the walls had pressed in tighter every day—he’d kill himself.

First, however, he’d kill Harley Vane for getting him into this mess.

“What’s that mean again?” Dr. Lantos asked, as she extended the masking tape.

Slater finished writing on the cardboard—
“Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae”
—before slapping the sign on the outside of the thick plastic walls separating the autopsy chamber from the rest of the lab tent. “It means, ‘This is the place where death rejoices to help the living.’ At the AFIP, we always kept the sign up to remind us why we were there. To help the living.”

“I hope the deacon feels the same way.”

“He was a man of God, wasn’t he?”

Lantos snorted. “You must have a higher regard for organized religion than I do.”

Slater had been brought up without any religion at all. And though he sometimes envied those who were able to find solace in their faith—his ex had still attended church on a regular basis—he was convinced that if the seed of belief weren’t planted early, it could never really thrive.

Both he and Dr. Lantos were already garbed from head to toe in hazmat suits, and now that they were ready to enter the autopsy chamber, they put on their face masks with plastic goggles. They took
a few extra seconds to adjust them and make sure they felt secure, since once they were inside it couldn’t be done again without running the risk of breaking the seal. Satisfied, Slater held open the heavy-duty plastic flaps of the chamber, and in a muffled voice, said, “After you.”

Lantos, whose hood was raised an inch or two by the frizz of her hair, ducked inside, and Slater followed, turning to seal the long Velcro strips that held the flaps closed. In here, even the rubber floor had a heavy plastic sheath beneath it; that way, when the work on St. Peter’s Island was done, the entire autopsy compartment could be rolled up like an enormous sheet of cellophane and incinerated. To Slater, it felt as if he’d stepped inside a jellyfish, with shimmering translucent walls all around, above, and below him.

The body of the deacon, still in his long black cassock with the red lining, lay on the autopsy table staring at the ceiling.

Lantos, poking at the corpse with one gloved finger, said, “They always take longer to thaw than you expect.” It was as if she were talking about a Thanksgiving turkey, and though an ordinary person might have been put off by her tone, Slater recognized it for what it was. This was how medical professionals—epidemiologists included—often spoke to each other. The casual banter was meant to dispel the doubts and fears and just plain moral confusion that confronted anyone about to desecrate and dismember human flesh. Otherwise, it was all too easy to see yourself instead lying on that table, a hunk of mortal ruins swiftly on its way to decay.